


Therapy Pets

by DrGaybelGideon



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: As close as I get, Fluff, Well - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-28
Updated: 2016-08-28
Packaged: 2018-08-11 11:14:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7889287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DrGaybelGideon/pseuds/DrGaybelGideon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Well someone had to look after them during Will's little Europe soujourn!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Therapy Pets

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Chiltonsfluffyhair](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chiltonsfluffyhair/gifts).



Taking Will’s pack of strays home to help him reclaim his own property is a ridiculous idea, one which maintains an air of nobility for the five minutes it takes two bored dogs to savage a pair of leather loafers between them.

Their owner smirks unhelpfully by Frederick’s side, seemingly getting an alarming amount of pleasure watching his Louis Vuittons be torn apart and only bothering to intervene when Frederick’s horror leads him to grab his old cane.  
“Buster! Winston!” Will calls, and they listen, dropping them obediently before the larger more menacing one slinks over to its smirking owners’ side. The feeling the other man doesn’t like him is one Frederick returns in kind: if Will had been this openly unpleasant during his short stay in hospital, he wouldn’t have had a toilet seat for a month. The fact he can’t confiscate it now is almost as annoying as the six sets of eyes monitoring his every move, large and slightly hungry. No. He’s not scared of dogs, he’s survived Hannibal Lecter and vivisection. “Buster.” Will points to a small brown and white dog who lets out a shrill startling bark at the sound of his name.  “Winston.” Winston’s a golden- fetcher?- retriever, the large one who’s seemingly glued to Will’s side. “And the rest of the pack.”  
Their names aren’t revealed to him, so Frederick edgily decides to name them once he’s gone, locking them in his front room and deciding to deal with the logistics later.  
  
Will’s left money for food. Food is simple. Place bowls on the floor. Make sure each dog eats only his own share- “No, Buster!”- get his hands out of the way before they’re considered a tastier alternative to the brown sludge meat he’s instructed to feed them.  
Sleep is different. Sleep involves him getting over his fear of the sudden scrabbling noises sometimes heard from the faar door of his room and yelling at the culprit until they slink back off downstairs, calming his thrumming pulse and shaking off the adrenaline until he can sleep again. He’s very glad for his lack of neighbours at this point. On the plus side, they sleep on the picnic blankets his mother sends him most Christmases, poorly knitted things he’s never decided he’s low enough to take out in public. She appreciates the occasional photos he sends, glad they’re getting some use out of them as she checks up on him. He ignores her advice to walk them. He owns a large enough back garden that they can tire themselves out there, and take care of the issues of waste in the same sentence. Neat. Simple. Unlike the dogs themselves.  
Winston’s the most prominently annoying one for his tendencies to pine for Will and wonder off in a futile attempt to find his owner. Exactly like the man who adopted him, a small nasty part of Frederick remarks with a smile. Winston ignores him.  
Buster’s the equally horrific opposite and delights in fetching him things from the garden, sometimes designer pyjamas he’s hung out to dry, sometimes small dead things including, a particularly upsetting time, a still living rat. Frederick can’t tell which traumatic muddy offering being wagged at him upsets him more.  
The rest of the pack are fairly calm placid things. His favourite one to interact with- if interact with involves standing at a safe distance and smirking at the thing’s appearance- is the one he’s nicknamed Underbite Dog, too intimidated by the thing’s visible fangs to take its collar in hand and check. It’s an odd little thing, attempts to assert its dominance over the smaller dogs and even some of the larger ones, yapping at a nonplussed Winston a few times in a sight Frederick can’t help but let out something that sounds awfully like a giggle at. It reminds him of every- one in particular- short medical professional he’s ever met, making up for in aggression what it lacks in size. He can see why Pavlov experimented on dogs now, they’re not as dissimilar to people as he’d once have liked to have believe.  
  
One of the little idiots has gotten into his wine cellar, he realises with a dull clench of his remaining stomach a month or so later. He knows it’s a dog, the scrabbling claws are a bit of a giveaway. It doesn’t help him to stop bringing back unpleasant memories of the last scared creature in his cellar, not, that he imagines, his old patient suffered for very long.  
He can’t do it. Can’t go down there and free the trapped animal in case it is Gideon, his nightly nightmare somehow turned into his waking one and slithering across the floor towards him. His heartrate’s stupidly high at the thought, a ridiculous one, he’s obviously been watching too many horror films. But he still can’t do it.  
  
He almost falls down his cellar steps at the soundless appearance of a dog behind him, vicious string of curses cut off by his slightly angry amusement. It’s Underbite dog, large staring eyes given a gormless expression by the fact it can’t actually clench its jaws without displaying teeth almost causing him to let out a loud laugh in the echoing semi-darkness of the cellar mouth.  
“No.” The dog doesn’t respond, of course it doesn’t, just stares up at him still more intently as he shakes his head. “Your compatriot got itself down there, it can get itself back out again.” Frederick knows it can’t. It will have wandered in, smelt around a bit please say it can’t still smell him and managed to slam the door behind itself, locking itself in with Gideon’s ghost. As if on cue, there’s a loud miserable whine from the cellar, then more scrabbling. “No.” He’s pleading with it now, the stupid ball of fur that looks like it’s suffered a disastrous collision with a pan in the past and is still staring up at him expectantly, waiting for him to go down and fetch his pack member. “I-”  
He can. And he has to, otherwise the other dogs will wake and he’ll have to settle them again- he’d rather- and for heaven’s sake he’d hate to be trapped down there in the cold-  
It’s tentative, the first brush of soft fur under his fingertips before he picks up the surprisingly heavy lump and wrestles it under one arm. The dog doesn’t mind, it’s good like that, wriggles more into his side as he grips the rail with his other hand and distracts him from the realisation his cellar could still be covered in police tape, the dog could be tangled in it, he hasn’t ventured down to check since he moved back in.  
It’s Winston, the little shit, of course it’s Winston. The littler dog under his arm jumps down to join him, checking, as Frederick stares around his own small hell.  
It’s clean. Exactly the way he left it, wine bottles intact and in place, operating table gone along with the remains on it and blood soaked counters clean. A little faded smell of bleach the only reminder of the events- horrors- that took place here.  
Abel was gone when he got here, the thought’s upsetting and comforting, eyes staring off into some other place when he was found. He’s there now, Frederick decides. No lingering malice here. Just a plain old wine cellar, his wine cellar, safe. Winston breaks his concentration, nuzzling the hand that’s dangling by his side in a gesture of comfort that he needs. He’s emotional, a mixed cocktail of endorphins and feelings he can’t even begin to try and analyse, pets the little warmth under his hands for the reassurance it offers as a smaller head presses into his leg. An rude instruction to move it, go back upstairs where it’s warmer that he takes, grabbing a long forgotten bottle of Merlot and locking the cellar behind him, a horribly cathartic gesture he reassures himself is for the sake of his four legged companions.  
Four legged bed mates, it later turns out, when he drinks a little too much and falls asleep on the couch next to them, reassured by steady snuffling breathing and the weight of Buster curling up on his feet.  
  
As both a reward and a way to burn off his hangover, he takes the entire pack- well, more appropriately ‘is dragged by all six during’- their first proper walk the next day, feet sliding in mud in a way that feels like ice skating at the speed they’re pulling him along. He’s buying cheap shoes tomorrow if he survives this, he promises, physically falling over the top of Buster the second they stop. Jeans too, he adds, staring at the mud and now holes in the knees of his current pair. One licks his face, a wet tongue next to the wound accessible from his winded position on the floor, and Frederick freezes. Winston appears on the other side of his face, anxiously nuzzling his safe cheek- when did the dog decide to like him?- until he stands up, knocking a pinecone from under his feet, and in an unsurprising move Buster chases it.  
He spends an embarrassingly long time and gains an equally unflattering amount of joy watching six dogs scrambling over eachother to retrieve him a stick, and finally admits there might be a small grain of truth to the accusations he enjoys holding power a little too much as he retrieves it from Winston with a pet.  
  
Frederick stares at himself after a pack accompanied run, plaid shirt covered in six different types of fur and better muscled forearms than he can remember having in an age, and wonders whether he can admit to himself he’s accidentally turned into a shorter, better haired Will Graham along the way.  
Not as good looking, obviously, and now he’s back, he really should have covered his scar, it’s still awful and-  
Underbite dog squints up at him from the floor of the full length mirror.  
Okay, he’s not that bad. And his body’s better, shoulders a little broader, forearms toned like-  
Like he’s been swinging an axe.  
The dogs appear, one by one, letting out small whines of concern after the fifth minute of him laughing at his own reflection in the mirror. At the right angle, with the right blank and surly facial expression, he looks like a slightly pudgier version of the ‘lumberjack fantasy’ he sometimes sees on cards.  
He should phone up Freddie or Alana, put on his face properly and ask if they’d like to help walk his dogs, or jog in public with them, hopefully get tangled up with a fellow dog walker, physically and emotionally. It worked for Will once, it could repeat itself. He doesn’t kick Buster out that night, because his closet’s locked. Doesn’t kick the other 6 out either, although he shuffles them off his feet when they cramp.  
He’ll smell of dogs for a week, but he can’t find it within him to care as the smallest shuffles under his arm.


End file.
